A typical summer day for 10-year-old Amanda Zhou is spent watching television, especially the show “Dance Moms.”

During June, however, Amanda becomes a budding engineer. As one of 200 participants in the Shelby County Summer Leadership Camp, she’s building solar-powered robots, learning leadership skills and making new friends.

While all students can fall behind academically during the summer break from school, students from low-income families are affected disproportionately.

According to the National Summer Learning Association, low-income students lose two to three months in reading achievement over the summer, while their higher-income peers tend to make slight gains. Additionally, most students lose about two months of grade-level equivalency in math skills during the summer. By the fifth grade, cumulative years of summer learning loss can leave low-income students up to three years behind their peers. And more than half of the achievement gap accumulated by ninth grade is attributed to summer learning loss.

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Summer programs such as the Leadership Camp are working to reverse such trends, in tandem with efforts by Shelby County Schools to lift lagging student test scores. However, declining revenues have forced the district to decrease this year’s summer school budget by 35 percent, and expiring grants are threatening the existence of some summer programs altogether.

In Memphis and Shelby County, where economically disadvantaged students comprise 69 percent of the district, summer learning loss becomes a foundational challenge for both students and teachers as the new school year begins. Most students lose ground in math and reading.

Madison Guy, 14, experiments with a robot that she helped to build (photo by Caroline Bauman).

Nikki Wilks, an English teacher at Kingsbury High School, deals with the repercussions every fall.

“It’s really obvious when a student goes from reading every day during the school year to nothing at all for months,” Wilks said. “It’s frustrating for teachers because we spend weeks remediating, and it’s devastating for some of our kids who drop even further behind their peers.”

Wilks sees evidence of “summer slide” in her students’ ACT scores, which typically have been lower in the fall than in the previous spring.

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Research spanning across a century shows that students generally score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer break than at the end of a school year, according to a 2007 article published in the American Sociological Review.

Matt Campbell, a former Soulsville Charter School teacher, said an easy way to understand summer learning loss is through the “faucet theory.”

“When schools close for the summer, it’s like turning off a faucet that’s been providing a steady stream of water,” Campbell said. “Students whose parents can take them to museums or pay for camps can supplement that. Lower income students are just dry for two months.”

While few would disagree with the faucet theory, Campbell said society isn’t very serious about summer slide due to a nostalgic view of summer as a time of picnics in the park and trips to the beach. Even so, many children don’t live in safe neighborhoods where they can go outside and explore or have the opportunity to travel, leaving them to sit passively in front of a computer screen or TV.

“The question isn’t, ‘Does summer learning loss exists?’ The question is, ‘What do we do about it?’” said Campbell, now an assistant director at Memphis Teacher Residency. “If we’re going to get serious about stopping summer learning loss, it’s going to take a village.”

In cities like Memphis, the critical need for effective summer learning programs is conflicting with shrinking resources as school budgets are cut and federal and philanthropic grants are increasingly tapped.

June 19 is
National Summer Learning Day

For instance, the popular Summer Leadership Camp is funded by the federal Race to the Top grant, but that money dries up this summer. Now in its fifth year, the camp could expand its reach to a waiting list of children, but instead may shut down after this summer, said camp principal Michael Demster.

“We’ve got more than 200 kids here who are learning to love learning, but how many are at home right now?” Demster asked. “How many are plopped in front of a screen all summer, completely unengaged?”

A desire for more summer learning programs is documented among families. Nineteen percent of Tennesseans reported that their children took part in a summer learning program in the summer of 2009, while 56 said they were interested in their kids attending one, according to a 2010 report by the nonprofit Afterschool Alliance.

About 85 percent of Tennessee parents said they support public funding for summer learning programs, 3 percent higher than the national average, the report says.

While some parents have reached out Demster to ask if they can help with funding to keep the camp alive, he worries that charging a price would make the program inaccessible for students who could most benefit.

The average weekly cost of a summer program nationwide is $250 per student, which equates to nearly one-third of a weekly salary for a single parent earning the median income. Shelby County Schools provides summer school and programs at no cost to families, while other summer programs, such as at the YMCA or Boys and Girls Clubs, are offered throughout Memphis — but at a cost.

Because summer learning loss is a significant academic issue for Shelby County Schools, Demster hopes district officials and philanthropists identify summer learning programs as a good investment.

“We need more camps like this in Memphis, not less,” he said. “This is a need we as a community have to put at the top of our priority list.”

Fourteen-year-old Matthew Hill agrees. While working on a robot project during his second year at leadership camp, he said the program is his favorite part of summer, even more than football practice.

“Summer camp is so much different than school, but it’s funny, because you still learn so much,” Matthew said. “I know a lot of kids who don’t get to do anything like this. I know I’m lucky, because school isn’t as hard when it starts.”

Parent resources for combating summer slide at home can be found on the National Learning Association website.

Manuela Martinez doesn’t want Spanish-speaking families to get lost in the fast-changing education landscape in Memphis as the city’s Hispanic population continues to grow.

The mother of two students is among 19 parents in the first Spanish-speaking class of Memphis Lift’s Public Advocate Fellowship, a program that trains parents on local education issues.

“We want to be more informed,” said Martinez, whose children attend Shelby County Schools. “I didn’t know I had much of voice or could change things at my child’s school. But I’m learning a lot about schools in Memphis, and how I can be a bigger part.”

More than 200 Memphians have gone through the 10-week fellowship program since the parent advocacy group launched two years ago. The vast majority have been African-Americans.

The first Spanish-speaking cohort is completing a five-week program this month and marks a concerted effort to bridge racial barriers, said Sarah Carpenter, the organization’s executive director.

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The city’s mostly black public schools have experienced a steady growth in Hispanic students since 1992 when only 286 attended the former Memphis City Schools. In 2015, the consolidated Shelby County Schools had 13,816 Hispanic children and teens, or 12.3 percent of the student population.

Lidia Sauceda came to Memphis from Mexico as a child; now she has two children who attend Shelby County Schools. Through Memphis Lift, she is learning about how to navigate Tennessee’s largest district in behalf of her family.

“Latinos are afraid of talking, of standing up,” Sauceda said. “They’re so afraid they’re not going to be heard because of their legal status. But I will recommend this (fellowship) to parents. How do we want our kids to have a better education if we can’t dedicate time?”

The training includes lessons on local school options, how to speak publicly at a school board meeting, and how to advocate for your children if you believe they are being treated unfairly.

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The first fellowship was led by Ian Buchanan, former director of community partnership for the state-run Achievement School District. Now the program is taught in-house, and the Spanish-speaking class is being led this month by Carmelita Hernandez, an alumna.

“No matter what language we speak, we want a high-quality education for our kids just like any other parent,” Hernandez said. “A good education leads to better opportunities.”

When it comes to summer learning, it’s been a better year for Memphis, where a range of new programs have helped to stem learning loss that hits hard in communities with a high number of low-income students.

On Thursday, Mayor Jim Strickland celebrated that work in conjunction with National Summer Learning Day and against the backdrop of the children’s reading room of the city’s main library.

He estimated that 10,000 children and teens are being reached this summer through learning programs spearheaded through Shelby County Schools, Literacy Mid-South, Memphis Public Libraries, churches and nonprofit organizations across the community.

That’s a record-breaking number, Strickland says, in a city with a lot of students struggling to meet state and local reading targets.

Summer learning loss, also known as summer slide, is the tendency for students to lose some of the knowledge and skills they gained during the school year. It’s a large contributor to the achievement gap, since children from low-income families usually don’t get the same summer enrichment opportunities as their more affluent peers. Compounded year after year, the gap widens to the point that, by fifth grade, many students can be up to three years behind in math and reading.

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But this summer for the first time, Shelby County Schools offered summer learning academies across the city for students most in need of intervention. And Memphis also received a slice of an $8.5 million state grant to provide summer literacy camps at nine Memphis schools through Tennessee’s Read to be Ready initiative.

Literacy Mid-South used Thursday’s event to encourage Memphians to “drop everything and read!”

The nonprofit, which is providing resources this summer through about 15 organizations in Greater Memphis, is challenging students to log 1,400 minutes of summertime reading, an amount that research shows can mitigate learning loss and even increase test scores.

Reading is a problem for many students in Memphis and across Tennessee. Less than a third of third-graders in Shelby County Schools read on grade level, and the district is working to boost that rate to 90 percent by 2025 under its Destination 2025 plan.

The city of Memphis, which does not fund local schools, has made Memphis Public Libraries the focal point of its education work. This summer, the library is offering programs on everything from STEM and robotics to art and test prep.

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Parents are a critical component, helping their kids to take advantage of books, programs and services that counter the doldrums of summer learning.

Soon after the mayor left the Benjamin L. Hooks Library on Thursday, Tammy Echols arrived with her son, Torrence, a rising first-grader at Levi Elementary School. Echols said they visit regularly to read books and do computer and math games.

“We always do a lot of reading and we’re working on learning sight words,” Echols said as she watched her son build a tower out of giant Lego blocks. “Torrence is a learning child and it’s easy to forget what you just learned if you’re not constantly reinforcing.”